I am one of 3 partners in a medical practice. We currently use a local branch of Wells Fargo Advisors in our town to manage our 401k. Recently, our accountant came to me with the average returns of each employee's 401k with concern because many were negative for each of the last three years. I was dumbfounded how someone could be negative in 2014 and 2016. 2015 is understandable. I know that the advisors use active management funds to invest my employees money. I personally don't let them make decisions with my money and have instructed them to put all of my money in the Vanguard Lifestrategy Growth Fund. But most of my employees have no idea about finances and don't have a clue about this stuff. I feel like my employees would be better served with just putting their money in an all-in-one fund with Vanguard or such company like I do.

My questions is:
Is there a way that I can set up a 401K for my employees without involving a financial advisor group. We could just provide 10-20 good index type funds and teach the employees which fund would be best for them. This would avoid the 1% fee an advisor would charge and, in my opinion, give them better investment options. Thoughts?

I recently went Vanguard (administered by Acesnus) for setting up my firm's 401k plan. Employee Fiduciary is also a good option, and with plan assets less than a million dollars it is less expensive than Vanguard. I believe Vanguard provides optional advisor services that employees can elect to use (0.35% expense ratio added if used). While it is noble that you want to teach your employees about investing, when the next downturn comes you don't want them blaming you for the money they lost...so having a third party be the advisor is a nice option.